Cliffords: "After the summer, I think we all got a severe case of imposter syndrome"

As a band who’ve played their fair share of major outdoor shows over the past few years – particularly during their absurdly busy summer of ‘25 – it feels fitting that a festival provided the backdrop to an early chapter in Cliffords’ story, back in 2019.

“That was the first time me and Gavin [Dawkins] properly spoke – at Indiependence Festival in Cork,” lead singer Iona Lynch recalls. “Bastille, Lewis Capaldi and Catfish and the Bottlemen all played. I was like 17, and had to use my cousin’s ID – but she was also at the festival, so I had to meet her at a part of the wall, and she threw the ID over. We had a great time at that one!”

In the years since, the Cork four-piece – also made up of Harry Menton and Locon O’Toole – have established themselves at the forefront of a brilliantly independent-minded music scene in their city, while also generating serious buzz far beyond the banks of the Lee.

After self-releasing their debut EP, Strawberry Scented, in 2024, last year saw them make good on their early promise – with sold-out shows, millions of streams, high-profile support slots, sets at Glastonbury and Misneach, multiple award nominations, and the release of their acclaimed, and heavily Cork-informed, Salt Of The Lee EP, via Soil To The Sun, an imprint of UK label Relentless Records. Before the year was out, they also found time to unveil their most recent single, ‘Marsh’, a compelling indie-rock take on seasonal depression.

Their 2026 is already unfolding just as dramatically. As well as making their Beyond The Pale debut this June, Cliffords will be spending their summer opening for the likes of Mumford & Sons at London’s Hyde Park, Florence + The Machine at Milan’s Ippodromo Snai San Siro, and Wolf Alice at Newcastle’s Exhibition Park.

When it comes to their all-time stand-out support slot though, the band are in agreement: Queens Of The Stone Age, in Dublin last August.

“How big it was, and how big a deal it was, has only caught up to me recently,” Iona reflects. “We got the call for that only a few days before. To open for such an incredible band, and at IMMA, which is massive… It was actually so overwhelming that I couldn’t even think about it until a few months ago.”

“I was freaking out for a few weeks after,” keyboardist Locon O’Toole agrees. “I just didn’t know what to do with myself.”

Last year’s festival season was also defined by important moments of protest and solidarity, largely spearheaded by Irish acts. Cliffords were among the bands that pulled out of Victorious Festival in Portsmouth last August, after organisers cut off The Mary Wallopers for displaying a Palestinian flag during their set, and leading a ‘Free Palestine’ chant.

“It’s always incredibly important,” Iona says of using their platform in that way. “It’s such a small thing for you to do personally as an artist – to show solidarity and to speak out against horrible things that are going on in the world. But it can mean so much to other people, and it can create a sense of community. And if you’re all speaking out against something together, it makes it feel more like things can actually change. It was good to see that at a lot of festivals. And most of the time, we had no problems at all. Other than Victorious, it was usually welcomed – most people were on the right side of history.

“The Last Dinner Party reached out to us as well, once they had pulled out,” she continues. “Just to be like, ‘We’re all doing this together.’ For them as a headliner, and as a much bigger band, to pull out  – we all respected that so much. It was the right thing to do. The way The Mary Wallopers were treated was disgraceful. They weren’t doing anything violent. They were peacefully protesting for Palestine.”

“Last summer was our first time really having a platform,” Locon adds. “So we felt we had to do something, even something small – like performing with the flag, or talking about it, or using our social media platforms to talk about it. The more people talking about it, the more dialogue that’s created, and the more information people have.”

Cliffords Supporting Queens of The Stone Age @RHK 20-8-25

But looking back now over the events of the past year, Iona admits that it’s all been “a bit of a blur.”

“So much has changed for us as people, and for us as a band, since the EP,” she says of Salt Of The Lee, which was released last May. “It’s crazy that it’s been a year now. Festival season didn’t even feel like months, it just felt like one block of time. We weren’t home for longer than two days for about three months.

“And now, since January, we’ve just been writing, nine to five, Monday to Friday, in our practice space here – which is a different kind of busy. The festival stuff almost feels like it happened to different people. It feels like a completely different time.”

At the time of our conversation, the band are operating out of their practice space up Dublin Hill, on Cork's northside – though they've since revealed via social media that, while Cork will always be their home, they're "moving to London for a little while." Do they feel the sense of place and identity surrounding the Real Capital still informs their writing, as they work towards their debut album?

“Cork is always super important,” Iona notes. “It’s the core of it. It’s where we’ve all grown up, and where we met. It’s the music scene that’s shaped us, with all these amazing bands we’ve had the pleasure of meeting and being friends with, and also being influenced by their music.

“But this album’s less on the nose than Salt Of The Lee,” she adds. “This one is less of a Cork concept thing – but it’s always going to inform it as well.”

Credit: Cal McIntyre

These past few months have also been crucial in allowing Cliffords to “really find [their] sound,” Iona notes.

“It was something that we didn’t quite nail for ourselves personally, in our first few releases,” she tells me. “Those first few pieces sound amazing, and we love them, but they’re not exactly what we wanted to land on. Now we’re getting closer to that.”

“We’ve all gotten good at bringing in our different influences, but actually merging them together in a cohesive way that feels new,” Locon nods. “It’s quite exciting, the stuff we’re making now. It feels different.”

It was a gradual process, however.

“After the summer, I think we all got a severe case of imposter syndrome, because we’d just seen so many amazing bands,” Iona reflects. “It was this whole thing, ‘Oh, we should do what they’re doing, or what they’re doing.’ And then I couldn’t write anything good for a while, because I was so worried about being like other people.

“We had a few massive discussions about it, and we came to the conclusion that we needed to trust ourselves, and back ourselves – and not worry about what people will think, or what’s cool.”

“There’s just so many cool bands and artists that we see,” adds Locon. “So to let go of this need to be cool in that sense, is so freeing, and so unique. I think more bands need to do that.”

“Yeah,” Iona laughs. “Fuck cool.”

• Cliffords play Beyond The Pale, Co. Wicklow on Saturday, June 13.